I’m not sure if you have noticed this or not, but it seems like people make up a lot of excuses these days.  No one is ever at fault.  They always have an excuse.  Winnona Ryder, after being arrested at Saks Fifth Avenue with $4700 worth of clothing stuffed in her bag, said “I was told I should shoplift.  My director said I should try it out.”  Even in the midst of the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP executives said they were unprepared for a spill of this magnitude because of faulty data they had received from the U.S Government.  Apparently, 2004 projections said that any oil spilled in the gulf would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather.  In other words, they said, “How were we supposed to know the oil would come ashore – you said it wouldn’t!”

This morning's BBC report discloses that the French government has refused to grant citizenship to man because he is forcing his wife to wear the 'full veil'. Because she is not free to 'come and go with her face uncovered', this man's values place him a category of person to whom the French government denies citizenship. It is recommended by the French government that anyone showing signs of "radical religious practice" be refused citizenship.I'm interested in your thoughts on this subject so I'll just toss some questions out:

1. The phrase 'radical religious practice' seems ambiguous. Isn't 'eating the flesh and drinking the blood' (see John 6, or your weekly communion table) also radical? Or living in community? What are the risks that this ruling becomes precedent setting for all manner of religious persecution? On the other hand, isn't the state obligated to protect the powerless (Romans 13), and isn't this woman being rendered powerless? But what if she wants the full covering?